Interesting comment about air travel and in particular the effect on one type of Digital Camera (whole line of photo sites affected across the sensor) although it applies to all digital cameras per pixel.

Acknowledges film is going... Almost a ''you don't know what your going to miss till it's gone'' presentation.

A tad woolly regarding back-lit advances (not really mentioned) but very interesting all the same.

Apologies if already posted, as it was a ''Cine Gear Expo'' posted in this section

There's a serious lack of understanding there on some digital issues. For instance, his explanation of fixed pattern noise is not correct. It's nothing to do with the photosite, but the calibration and alignment of the amplifiers and the column differences between them.

Well, he was honest to mention that no one in the room knew how sensors worked.

I am not quite sure gamma rays on a plane are as bad in general as he claims they are. My astro cameras have travelled by plane and I haven't noticed any drastic changes in the calibration frames I routinely take. And that's both on relatively old sensors (which don't have any kind of remapping logic) and more recent ones similar to those used in some consumer cameras (where we don't necessarily know what's going on in the background). Then, of course, you get the occasional hit on earth as well, especially given the long exposures used, and they definitely don't kill pixels.

No gamma rays are not as bad as he makes out! The smaller the pixel the greater the issue, but people fly the world over with CMOS based cameras without any bother at all. At RED there's a number of people who fly regularly with their cameras, including the founder who has flown with his RED's practically every week and hasn't noticed dead pixels and certainly not dead columns.

Thanks for the confirmation Graeme. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the notion of induced column defect, at the sensor level, in a CMOS sensor. The problem, if real as described, could lie elsewhere in the electronic chain. This guy sounds like a high level executive, with a business or law degree, who is crafting a compelling presentation, thanks to his smooth talking skills, based on misunderstood information... Quite frequent in those circles.